About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Unrest in Libya had to do with housing shortages

The Libyan leader, ´brother colonel´ Muammar Qadhafi, during his televised speech in which he lectured the Tunisians that they had made a mistake to chase Ben Ali away.

Libyan citizens occupied hundreds of homes at the end of last week that are still under construction and ransacked the offices of foreign contractors that are building them, online newspaper Oea reported.
Libya has been struggling to meet a rapid rise in housing demand from younger citizens who are embracing modern lifestyles and (many of whom, not all of them) no longer want to live with their parents.
Oea said housing projects under construction in several cities had come under a “wave of occupation” late on Thursday and early Friday. Some were looted and in a number of cases occupiers sold on the houses for giveaway prices. The newspaper said security forced had arrested “criminal groups” that had robbed the offices of foreign firms executing the projects.
The report comes as the neighbouring country Tunisia was still dealing with the aftermath of the ouster of president Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the country on Friday after almost four weeks of unrest. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi said on Saturday that Tunisia was suffering bloodshed and lawlessness because its people were in too much of a rush to get rid of Ben Ali, whom he praised for developing Tunisia.
A Reuters reporter in Tripoli said that the situation in the capital was calm on Monday and that there was no significant deployment of security forces. A government authority in charge of religious affairs urged preachers in Libya’s mosques to warn their worshipers against the kind of rioting seen at the housing projects.“The riot caused by these citizens has nothing whatsoever to do with our Islam and Islamic values. The next sermon will urge all citizens to stick to Islamic teachings that call for tolerance, order and not attacking fellow Muslims,” Oea quoted the authority’s secretary, Ibrahim Adeslam.

Update: Copies of the video's lateron (on Wednesday) reappeared. They are to be found on the site Why we protest. Here one of them:

Oea did not say what might have sparked the wave of occupations. But a witness told the paper: “Thugs took over the apartments by force and sold them to well-off buyers in fancy cars.” The government pays public sector employees a housing allocation and authorities have pledged to build 250,000 new houses by the end of 2014. But some projects appear to be facing delays. One Internet user said he had been waiting since 2004 to get his home.
The riots at the end of the week were accompanied by an all out attack on Libyan internet sites. Also YouTube was banned in Libya and video´s of the disturbances that had been circulating on Sunday, disappeared from the net. But on Monday most of the sites that had been banned returned.